James Bayliss Buck Farmstead
Rosebud, Falls County, Texas
Marker Inscription
James Bayliss Buck (1875-1959), the fourth of seven children to Catherine Patience Bayliss and James Mason Buck, was born on the family tobacco farm near Clarksville, Tennessee. The Buck family moved to Upshur County, Texas, in 1879 and in 1885, James Mason Buck purchased a farm near Fate, Rockwall County, Texas. In 1901, Rev. John W. Bergin, later Southwestern University President, performed the first wedding in the new Travis Methodist Church uniting James Bayliss Buck and Lurah Dorinda Whiteside (1878-1959). Their daughters Reba Cleo and Vita Lona were born in Fate. Economical land prices in Falls County prompted James Bayliss Buck to purchase acreage near Travis, Texas, in 1904 and move his family to Travis in 1908. James Bayliss Buck and John Franklin Cooley, Lurah’s brother-in-law, completed the farmhouse, barn, smokehouse, outhouse, field dwelling and two water wells in 1909. Buck followed the vernacular architectural tradition and designed his Travis farm residence after his father’s home in Fate. Described as the gable front and wing configuration of the folk Victorian style, the Buck Farmhouse is balloon framed and exhibits a mix of Queen Anne and Greek Revival influences. In 1920, Reba Cleo Buck (1902-1993) married immediate neighbor Hubert Thedford Johnson (1902-1988). In 1933, Hubert Johnson became administrator of the Waco Methodist Orphanage where he and Reba developed a nationally-recognized child care institution. Johnson purchased the Buck Farm in 1948. The James Bayliss Buck Farmstead is the best preserved example of the initial farming settlement that once supported the Travis community. RECORDED TEXAS HISTORIC LANDMARK – 2015
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
James Bayliss Buck, born on a Tennessee tobacco farm in 1875, came to Texas as a child and in 1904 bought cheap land in Falls County, moving his family there and completing the farmhouse, barn, and outbuildings in 1909. Modeled on his father's home and framed in the Folk Victorian tradition with Queen Anne and Greek Revival touches, the house anchored the small Travis farming community. Buck's daughter Reba married neighbor Hubert Johnson, who later led the Waco Methodist Orphanage into a nationally recognized child-care institution and bought the family farm in 1948.
Why it matters
The Buck Farmstead is the best-preserved survivor of the vernacular farming settlements that once filled rural Central Texas, and it links one such farm to a landmark of early American child welfare.
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Related people
- · James Bayliss Buck
- · Hubert Thedford Johnson
- · Reba Cleo Buck
Themes & tags
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